Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

Episode 3

If Shaun of the Dead has proven anything when it comes to the zombie genre, it's that any chronicle of undead, apocalyptic shenanigans will likely be improved by featuring two lovable idiot best friends who continue to act like absolute goobers in the face of such existential horror. This is a lesson that I'm happy to see Zom 100 take To Heart. When Akira added those items about “hanging with his best bud” to his Bucket List, I initially assumed that making the best bud in the first place would be the first order of business since he didn't have time to maintain any friendships during his time being worked to the bone by ZLM. Funnily enough, I had succumbed to the same fallacious near-sightedness that plagued Akira himself because it turns out that he always had a life and friends waiting for him outside of the confines of his cubicle; he just blinded himself to them out of sheer survival instinct.

Ever since those collegiate salad days, though, Akira has had Kencho, and one of the big revelations of this lovely little episode is that their relationship had only soured relatively recently, pre-ZomPocalypse. While Akira was in the deepest throes of despair and self-pity, the very rich and successful Kencho became that one friend who managed to rub every single one of his coolest and most gratifying achievements in your face, and with one hell of a shit-eating grin, at that. This, naturally, drove Akira mad, and their tense final drinking session was the last time either of them spoke, just a year before the world ended.

As we'll see when the pair end up reuniting at a kinky BDSM club, of all places, this kind of sensible and relatable character writing is proving to be one of Zom 100's greatest assets. We've already walked enough miles in Akira's shoes to understand why he'd get so pissed off at seeing his best friend living such an ostensibly happy life, but once again, instead of just painting Akira as an unlikable protagonist, the show uses these flashbacks to remind us once more how much agency and potential are robbed from people trapped in such a crushing environment. Sure, a lot of folks can maybe relate to Kencho telling Akira to just suck it up and quit his job, but it isn't long before we learn that Kencho himself felt just as trapped in his gilded cage and that he hated life just as much as Akira did.

I mean, I don't know if the show fully nails making Kenchiro's plight as empathetic as Akira's since there's only so much whining about being rich and well-connected that most people can stand, but it's an admirable effort, nonetheless. More importantly, as Akira and Kencho fight to escape the zombie hordes, you get a deep sense of their friendship, and it's portrayed in a much more realistic manner than I feel a lot of bromances are done these days. Maybe it's just me, but I'm fairly certain that if my college buddies and I got stuck in a zombie wasteland, we'd end up buck-ass naked and scraping our junk against the side of skyscrapers, just for the hell of it.

Another element I liked a lot was the almost completely irrelevant host-club side story that pops up throughout the episode. One of my favorite gags in a genre story like this is when you have that cutaway or filler episode that shows another set of characters living in a completely different show altogether. I hope we get a Yakuza side story at some point, at the very least.

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Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead is currently streaming on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and Netflix.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.